14 NGSS Teaching Resources for the Classroom

In this post, teachers will find three primary groups of NGSS resources to help them in the classroom. Two groups focus on those classroom resources with lesson plans and those without. The third group offers teacher tutorials to help educators deliver an NGSS curriculum.

These curated resources work with Legends of Learning’s 90 lessons, 800 games, and thousands of assessment items based on NGSS and state standards. In addition, our Earth and Space lessons also have lesson plans. Check them out today!

And with that, please find the NGSS resources below.

Resources with Lesson Plans

1) eGFI: Engineering Go For It (eGFI) offers a wide variety of lesson plans for middle school science. These lessons help teachers meet the required science and engineering practices (SEP) aspect of NGSS implementation.

2) NGSS on the NSTA Site: Is it crazy to think that the curator of the NGSS standards would also have a great series of NGSS resources, too? Of course not. The NSTA provides an excellent source of lesson plans and content for their classrooms.

3) OpenEd: It will take some sifting, but OpenEd has an incredible amount of NGSS-aligned lesson plans, quizzes, homework assignments, videos, and games. Most of the content covers the DCI (Disciplinary Core Ideas) as well as crosscutting concepts (CCC). Search away!

4) PBS Learning Media: Like GLOBE (below), PBS Learning Media offers plenty of content in a wide variety of formats, from video to traditional documents and everything in between. The search feature allows you to sift through the content by topic or standard, and even find lesson plans. Enjoy this great series of NGSS resources!

5) Q?rius from the Smithsonian: The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History offers Q?rius resources for teachers seeking to bring the Smithsonian into their classroom. Q?rius delivers 30 Earth and Life Science topics, all of which include printable lessons.

Resources without Lesson Plans

6) The GLOBE Program: This resource provides content based on education standards from across the world, with a focus on the National Science Education Standards in the United States. While NGSS was not the focal point for the United States, GLOBE does focus on data collection and the scientific process, which meets the SEP component of the NGSS. You will need to use Teacher’s Guide search to find NGSS compliant content, but there is plenty to find.

7)SERC K-8 Activities: The ultimate curated source of SERC activities, this site gives teachers access to hundreds of Earth and Space, Life, and Physical Science tools. You will find classroom activities, field activities, lab activities and more here.

8) Science Snacks: Science Snacks from the Exploratorium Teacher Institute offer a wide variety of hands-on science activities based on museum exhibits. A (linked) guide helps teachers align the activities to the NGSS standard set they are working on.

9) Sophia for Teachers: This site offers a series of NGSS lesson content, usually a video or written tutorial followed by a quiz. The library of NGSS content is far from complete here, but you can find some good complimentary resources.

Teacher Tutorials

11) Bozeman: If you like video tutorials, this site is for you. Featuring Hamish Todd, the Bozeman site offers short tutorials for teachers to help them implement individual lessons as well as SEPs and CCCs. Check it out!

13) Inquiry-Based Learning Tutorial: If you are looking to expand beyond content and want to incorporate the scientific inquiry aspect of SEP into your classroom, then check out this video tutorial from the Ontario Science Centre. Find the first of four videos below!